Obama: The sludge stops here

On Thursday, President Barack Obama’s damage control message was, I’m in control.

The president — so stern he didn’t crack a smile for the entire 63-minute East Room news conference — met the press to dispel the notion that he was disengaged, distracted and willing to let BP take the reins on the Gulf oil spill.

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As anonymous BP workers struggled with placing a "top kill" on the gushing well, Obama kept repeating variations on that theme for an hour: the Feds are in charge of the operation, not BP. He convened a meeting on Day One to plot the response to the leak. He’s briefed every day. He’s going back himself Friday.

Surrogates weren’t getting the job done, so Obama took the podium to make his own case, his first full-on presser in months. But in the process, Obama sent a few mixed messages of his own.

Obama bristled at the notion that the White House response has “lacked urgency” — only to admit, minutes later, that planned reforms of the federal agency monitoring deep water exploration, in fact, lacked “sufficient urgency.”

After he assumed unequivocal responsibility for the spill response, he proceeded to equivocate — blaming Bush-era deregulation, his predecessor’s failure to draft an adequate spill response plan and BP’s arrogance in overlooking flaws in their safety systems.

And he seemed downright uncertain on the circumstances surrounding the departure of Minerals Management Service director S. Elizabeth Birnbaum. “C’mon, I don’t know,” he said at one point, when pressed on whether she quit or was fired.

Here’s a look at what Obama said at the news conference and a POLITICO translation of what he may have been trying to convey:

ON THE “LACKADAISICAL” FEDERAL RESPONSE:

What he said: “Those who think we were either slow in our response or lacked urgency don’t know the facts. … Personally, I'm briefed every day. And I probably had more meetings on this issue than just about any issue since we did our Afghan review.”

What he meant: Put a sock in it, James Carville.

No single individual has been a more effective critic of the administration’s “lackadaisical” efforts (Carville’s description) on the Louisiana coast — or posed a more potent political threat — than Bill Clinton’s bayou-bred former political guru.

It’s one thing for conservatives like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh to proclaim the spill “Obama’s Katrina.” It’s another when the Times website runs the headline “Obama’s Spill?” — as it did on Thursday — or for Carville, a pro-Obama cable warrior to implore the president: "Man, you got to get down here and take control of this! Put somebody in charge of this thing and get this moving! We're about to die down here!”

Pressure has been building on the White House for days. Florida’s Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson has been making angry noises and recent polls show a majority of Americans disapproving Obama’s performance.

Obama had to do something to show he’s listening to critics, but that something didn’t necessarily have to be in prime time, which would have invited comparisons to President Bush’s post-Katrina Jackson Square speech in September 2005.